Working for an extended amount of time without taking a break epitomizes the classic American work ethic. Pulling 70+ hours at the office, skipping meals, taking calls whenever they come in, answering emails into the wee hours of the morning, working through every weekend—basically slave-driving oneself—is often regarded as virtuous—like some bizarre, ultimate proof of one’s genuine dedication to a career. “It’s the price you must pay to achieve success.”
Another reason for the absence of a respite is more malevolent. It begins with an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, slowly growing into an ambitious apparition, whispering in your ear, determined to convince you that if you don’t work hard enough, someone else out there in your field will win the prize and take everything away from you. This is the unnamed fear that drives most hard chargers—the force behind their refusal to slow down.
The incentive to outwork every single human being on the planet, however, can exact a heavy toll on one’s mind, body, relationships, and overall state of health and well-being.
If you are driven by an over-the-top work ethic—always on the lookout for gaining a competitive edge, you might consider indulging in something your competition probably hasn’t considered:
Start taking BREAKS on a regular basis!
To be clear, this is not an article about “all things in moderation” or “achieving balance in one’s life,” although there are some obvious applications in this area. My goal here is to share with you some compelling new evidence regarding the performance-enhancing benefits of taking regular breaks, as explained in the book, “Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the Sew Science of Success.” by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness.
The core of this book revolves around a simple formula: Stress + Rest = Growth. Simply stated, in order to achieve optimal growth in any endeavor, a rest period is, not only a good idea, it is absolutely essential to the process. Rest is not an optional ingredient any more than a hydrogen atom would be optional for creating a water molecule. The authors use muscle growth as a metaphor:
If your goal is to create bigger biceps, the first step is to stress the muscles with an adequate amount of weight resistance. For optimal growth, the load must be high enough to effectively challenge the muscle, yet, not so high as to overload it which would result in muscle failure or even injury. Additionally, if the resistance isn’t heavy enough, the muscles will not be sufficiently stimulated—resulting in little or no growth.
Conversely, if you don’t allow for enough rest time between workouts, your muscle gains will plateau, and possible even diminish in size. And with too much rest time between workouts, your muscles won’t be stimulated enough to facilitate significant growth. Striking a balance of rest and stress over an extended period of time will eventually yield bigger biceps.
The same concept applies to all forms of human performance. For the sake of reaching my fellow Type-A’s out there who refuse to take a break, I want to focus on the rest portion of the growth equation. Stulberg and Magness emphasize the fact that insufficient rest will first manifest as a plateau in your performance, but, left unchecked, will inevitably result in burnout. What impressed me most about their findings was the fact that adequate breaks are not only refreshing for one’s brain—they’re actually enhancing!
The authors highlight a study that analyzed the effects of taking regularly scheduled breaks, and how this affected the performance of employees in high-pressure, time-sensitive positions, such as those employed by competitive consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company. These people customarily work every day of the week for about 70-80 hours—driven to deliver the most forward-thinking advice in the shortest amount of time for their clients. They’re convinced if they don’t consistently work as hard as possible for as long as possible, another competitive firm will steal their clients, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in future business—leading to their eventual termination.
In this high stakes experiment, staffers were required to turn off their email after 8pm, and commit to not working for at least one night per week. It was a controversial mandate that had many employees and their respective managers worried that performance levels and production volume would drop. Surprisingly, however, after a month of implementing this practice, the quality of ideas and production volume improved appreciably, resulting in a net gain of contracts–not a loss.
This particular study was one of countless examples the authors cited to illustrate their findings—that people who applied rest, in the right measure, effectively re-invigorated their drained brains, and performed at higher cognitive levels with a decrease in mental burnout.
Admittedly, this equation, Stress + Rest = Optimal Growth, borders on simplistic, and requires a bit of finesse to put into practice.
As a rule, the greater the stress, the more rest you’ll need to take. If you work on a major project that requires multiple weeks of undivided attention, it makes sense, once the project is completed, to schedule an extended holiday, or at least a weekend getaway, to allow full recovery for your battered brain and body.
For smaller projects that require intensive focus, such as writing an article or putting together a simple sales proposal, schedule your time-windows for working in bursts of 45-90 minute stretches—followed by regularly-scheduled breaks for 10-15 minutes. (I published an article a few years back, presenting guidelines for structuring your work time with break time. You can read it here.)
Bottom line, most of us these days are not suffering from not-working long enough or hard enough. Our challenge is to resist the urge to drive ourselves into the ground when we imagine the stakes to be high at any given moment—which, of course, tends to be every given moment.
If you’re open to exploring these practices, I suggest you start experimenting with scheduling breaks as I’ve described here, and seek to discover an effective ratio of work time to rest time. Just as with weight training at the gym, the secret to optimal growth lies in balancing appropriate stress periods with appropriate recovery, recuperation, and rejuvenation.
